The Galaxy S III, launched to the accompaniment
of the London Metropolitan Orchestra here, will arrive
in the U.S. this summer for activation on “the
fastest LTE and HSPA+ networks,” a spokesperson
said. It will be displayed at CTIA Wireless 2012 in
New Orleans, and it rolls out in Europe this month.

The phone, with a large 4.8-inch 16:9 Super
AMOLED HD touchscreen, provides “a more convenient
and natural” user experience by detecting a user’s face, voice and motions, the company said.
The Smart Stay feature, for example, maintains
screen brightness when someone is browsing the
web or reading an e-book by using the front-facing
camera to track the user’s eyes.

Samsung said the Direct Call feature lets a person
view a text message, then automatically dial the
sender’s phone number when the phone is moved to
the user’s ear. The Smart Alert feature remembers
missed messages or calls, then vibrates the phone
when it is picked up to notify the user of the missed
communications.

The phone also boasts what Samsung calls S
Voice, or a “natural language user interface,” enabling
the phone to respond to voice commands to initiate
such functions as information search, song playback,
volume changes, sending text messages and emails,
organizing schedules and launching the camera
to capture a photo. Users can also say “snooze” to
snooze the phone’s alarm when they wake up.

The phone also improves on Android’s Near Field
Communications (NFC)- based Beam function,
which lets users share web pages, apps and You-
Tube videos by tapping phones together. To this, the
S III adds NFC sharing of movie and music files and
photos.

Another new user-interface feature is Pop Up
Play, which eliminates the need to close and restart
videos when checking emails, surfing the web or
launching other applications. Videos will continue to
play in a small window when, for example, the users
reads a message and taps out a reply.

Other features said to address common frustrations
with smartphones include an 8-megapixel rear
camera with zero-lag shutter speed.

Compared to its S II predecessor, the S III will
feature 4G LTE and will launch with Android 4.0,
whereas its predecessor launched with Android
2.3, though a 4.0 upgrade for the S II has been announced.

Other advances over the S II include quad-core
processor, faster app launching and web browsing,
Wi-Fi Channel Bonding to double Wi-Fi bandwidth,
and larger 1,280 by 720 4.8-inch 16:9 screen, compared
with the 4.3 and 4.52-inch screens on the
U.S. versions of the S II.

The features of the device also include WiFi Direct,
Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n, HD video capture on the front
1.9-megapixel camera, burst shot function to capture
20 pictures in rapid succession, and best photo feature
to select the best eight of the 20 pictures.